A fresh perspective on classical music
a review of Martha Anne Toll’s Duet for One
by Norah Vawter
Martha Anne Toll’s second novel, Duet for One (Regal House, 2025), is a lovely, meditative, lyrical book that drew me in immediately. I want to say that this is a quiet novel, but it's about music and musicians, so that seems like the wrong word. Especially because Toll excels at describing the classical music that permeates this story so well that I can almost hear the music swelling. But it’s a thoughtful book, a philosophical book, and a novel that made me feel calm and quiet as I read.
Duet for One opens in a Philadelphia graveyard following the death of Adele Pearl, a world-famous pianist who spent decades, most of her professional career, as one half of a two-piano duo. The other half is her husband Victor, who struggles to cope with his grief, and the fact that his entire world is shattered because he hasn’t just lost his wife, he’s lost his professional partner, his musical partner, his partner in all things.
The exchange of tunes from one pianist to another, the world that he and Adele had inhabited. What a way to spend your life, tossing phrases from your keyboard to your wife’s, hearing them returned, embellished, brightened. Who needed words when you could make music by day, make love by night?
While we spend a good deal of time in Victor's perspective, Duet is a multiple-point-of-view novel. The primary protagonist is actually the Pearls’ grown son, Adam, who had a complicated, often strained relationship with his mother. In his thirties, Adam is a world-class musician in his own right. He's a violinist, and he shares with his parents not only talent, but also a love for the music he plays, a passion that borders on obsession.
The book’s third point-of-view character is Dara Kingsley, Adam’s first love and a former viola player, now college English professor. They met and fell in love when they were teenagers playing in the same orchestra. But by the time Dara was in college, she realized that she was never going to be a great musician, and so she gave up her training, her dreams, and Adam. Dara and Adam haven’t spoken in many years, but they’re both still hung up on each other. Adele’s death gives them an opportunity to reconnect, if they can get over their lack of communication skills.
Though Duet is not strictly an autobiographical novel, the author did draw heavily on her personal experience in the classical music world. Toll is a classically trained viola player and has a B.A. in music from Yale. She moved on from music to study law and had a career in social justice work before pivoting again to writing. Toll is now a book critic for NPR and The Washington Post and based in D.C., though she grew up in Philadelphia where Duet is set. Her deep well of knowledge about all things chamber music is evident throughout the book—her fictional landscape is a vivid, rich world that feels real and gritty, giving the rest of us a peek behind the curtain.
Dara’s fingers calloused. She kept a nail clipper in her viola case so her nails didn’t impede her practicing. At school, Dara looked at her hands and saw they were changing. Her knuckles stuck out more; the fleshy part on the side of her left hand was hardening. She was right-handed, but her left hand was becoming stronger than her right.
This is very much a book about creativity and the creative process, which Toll examines closely and in many facets, so that we see the physical cost of playing music at a high level, along with the emotional costs of ambition, rejection, and even success, and then we also see the joy and transcendence of the music itself. For Toll’s characters, music is a vocation, but it’s also a form of communication, and a way to understand others, oneself, and the world. Classical music even functions as a character within the novel. These people are in complicated relationships with each other, but also with music. And they are deeply devoted to the artistry, the hard work necessary to play at a high level, and the transformative and wondrous reality of experiencing great music.
Staring at the glossy black piano, the raised lid poised for music, Dara felt as if she’d fallen through an hourglass timer. She closed her eyes. Music flowed, sacred and peaceful. Bach’s first French Suite; the special tonality of D minor, a key signature that signaled sorrow. She was a girl standing before the door to the Pearls’ apartment, listening to Adele spin harmony, begging Adam not to go in. Anything to avoid disrupting Adele’s flow.
There are so many other themes at play in this novel—from gender and power dynamics, to memory and time, to the city of Philadelphia as another main character—that I found myself struggling to write this review because there is just so much to discuss. When there are so many possible directions you can go in as a writer, it can be difficult to find your footing, or your place in the orchestra. But the themes I keep coming back to are communication and perspective. Even more than an examination of creativity and music, Duet for One is an examination of how we understand one another. (And again, for these characters music is often a key component of their communication and understanding.)
We never get inside Adele Pearl’s perspective because she’s dead before the book begins. Instead we are privy to competing versions of who Adele was. These variations of Adele sometimes contradict each other, and other times complement each other, but no single variation seems to be completely “correct.” We also get competing versions of Adam, Victor, and Dara, because the way they see themselves varies from the way they are seen by each other. It’s very true to life. Toll seems to be making a statement about the gaps between truth and belief, between communication and assumption, and the difficulty of knowing anyone completely, even ourselves.
Though the book has many strengths, the dialogue is unfortunately clunky. When Toll’s characters take a leap and choose to opening up to someone else, they tend to say exactly what they’re thinking or feeling, and to explain more than seems realistic. Which is ironic in a book about the difficulty of communication. Towards the end of the book, as there are more conversations and revelations, the dialogue became a distraction for me. Similarly, Toll over-explains a concept of the relationship between music and time, by bringing in a character who is a music theorist and having characters discuss this concept out loud instead of simply letting the ideas run through the book. I found the ideas of music and time so fascinating, so my complaint here is about form, not content.
Nevertheless, this novel was a pleasure to read. Though Duet for One deals with intense grief and loss—along with complicated, thorny relationships—there is so much beauty and humanity running these pages that the narrative feels hopeful and redemptive. While we may never bridge the gaps between ourselves and others, we can try, and there is beauty, melody, and harmony in the attempt.
Buy your copy of Duet for One at Politics and Prose, Bookshop, or your favorite independent bookstore.
You can also check out the companion Spotify playlist Toll created, which includes music played by the characters in the book. And if you’re looking for more reading, Toll wrote a piece for the Washington Independent Review of Books where she recommends other books that get classical music right. Learn more about the author at www.marthaannetoll.com and find her on Substack.
Martha Anne Toll is a literary and cultural critic. Her new novel, Duet for One, a musical love story, was published in May 2025. Her debut novel, Three Muses, was shortlisted for the Gotham Book Prize and won the Petrichor Prize for Finely Crafted Fiction. Toll serves on the Board of the PEN/Faulkner Foundation and is a member of the National Book Critics Circle.
Norah Vawter is the co-founder and fiction/nonfiction editor of Washington Unbound. She’s a freelance writer, editor, and novelist and is represented by Alisha West. Follow her on Instagram @norahvawter and check out her Substack, Survival by Words, here.
